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FY 2010 Call for Director's Research and Development Fund Concept Papers

Concept Paper CallDeadline: Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4PM PDT
The call to solicit new Concept Papers to the Director's Research and Development Fund (DRDF) program is open

This is a Call to solicit Concept Papers to the Director's Research and Development Fund (DRDF) program. The program builds and strengthens strategic relationships with domestic universities and other external organizations in collaboration with the Laboratory staff through funding research in innovative science and breakthrough technology of strategic value to JPL and the partnership. Since space missions are fundamentally limited by technology, technological breakthrough offers a possibility of bypassing today's limitations leading to revolutionary, highly innovative improvements in Earth and Space science missions (including lunar missions).

In order to stimulate strategic collaborations between external institutions and JPL, the DRDF program requires external participation at domestic universities, companies, NASA Centers, or government laboratories. Participation of faculty on sabbatical at JPL is possible.

Submission Overview

The submission of new concept papers is the first step in a two-step procedure. In this first step, principal investigators must submit a one-page concept paper to an online submission site by Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 4 PM PDT. (The concept paper submission process is described below.) Each concept will be reviewed by the Divisions, and the Program Directorates or the Strategic University Research Partnership Office. Each review board will prioritize their top 2 concepts and then submit their priorities to the Office of the Chief Scientist and Chief Technologist (OCSCT). The Chief Scientist and Chief Technologist will then evaluate the results of the all the reviews and approve which concepts will go forward to full proposals. In the second step, which will occur during a later Call for Proposals, the authors of the approved new concepts will then be asked to submit a proposal. The reason for the two step process is to reduce the number of concepts that will go forward to full proposals and as a result reduce the amount of unnecessary work by the authors and reviewers. The odds of winning an award in the proposal phase increases to one out of three.

Renewals:

Proposals that receive an award will not be eligible to receive renewal funding. Therefore the concepts that are submitted should be written as complete one-year seed funding activities.

Concept Submission:

Principal investigators may only submit one concept paper. Your concept paper must be submitted by 4 PM PDT on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 in accordance with the following procedure:

The downloadable electronic copy of the concept template, Attachment A can be found in the Concepts Guidelines on the DRDF website, http://drdf.jpl.nasa.gov/guidelines/guidelines-cp.cfm. The completed Attachment A concept paper file must be electronically submitted into the website. Instructions for obtaining your assigned concept number and electronically submitting the completed Attachment A Concept Paper file can be found at http://drdf.jpl.nasa.gov/submissions. We strongly recommend you submit the electronic copy early.

After having submitted your Attachment A file electronically into the website, seven (7) copies of the completed concept paper (printout of the electronic copy of Attachment A) must be received by Vivian Molina no later than 4 PM PDT on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, M/S 180/600, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099 (or hand deliver them to office 180/600C). Please make sure that your assigned concept number is on your Attachment A before you make the required copies.

LATE SUBMISSIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED - NO EXCEPTIONS

This Call, the associated guidelines, the details regarding the concept template, and the downloadable version of the required Attachment can be found on the DRDF website found at http://drdf.jpl.nasa.gov.

NOTE: All submissions need to be readable in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF. (Please make sure that the uploaded file name is no longer than 28 characters and it ends with the extension .doc or .pdf) The author is responsible for assuring the readability of the document. Documents that are unreadable will not be accepted.